5 ms·

Not sure if this transpired in the writing, but my interpretation of RIIR, partially informed by the chat with JT [0], is that this is a sentiment that I guess

Not sure if this transpired in the writing, but my interpretation of RIIR, partially informed by the chat with JT [0], is that this is a sentiment that I guess is there in some people, but that it was never something officially sanctioned. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ny7Qrsbd8&t=5391s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ny7Qrsbd8&t=5391s

steveklabnik 5y ago
It is a weird self-fulfilling thing. People talk about it like it's a thing, so it's a thing, even if there's very little actual evidence of anyone sincerely holding this belief. People repeat that there's this plague of folks requesting that projects be re-written, and while it is literally true that I have seen two or three instances of this (you link to one of them, and notably it is not anyone harassing maintainers about their choices), it's been two or three. I actually got annoyed with this enough that I started doing a quantitative analysis; if you look at the canonical repository tracking this, it's got 44 total issues, most of which are jokes https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues If you search GitHub for issues with these words in it, you get some, but many are either obvious jokes, people making issues on their own projects to think about doing this, and things like that. I never followed through on collecting it into a blog post though. I didn't think your writing was inappropriate at all; memes are memes, and I'm convinced that this one is just never going to die, because it's taken a life of its own, regardless of the underlying truth or not. It is always worth pushing back on this sentiment, even if I don't think Rust specifically tends to actually embody that sentiment very much. (Also: I don't know why you're now being downvoted. Hacker News works in mysterious ways.)
- kristoff_it 5y ago
  Looking forward to when we get our own unfounded never-dying meme :^)
- crazy_horse 5y ago
  Why does it matter?
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    I think it matters less and less, which is part of why I didn't follow through on publishing. As to why it used to matter, well, it is tremendously difficult to bring a new programming language into popular usage, and even more in the systems space. It requires tireless effort by a large number of people. It is a very fragile thing. The stories we tell ourselves and others matter, and they influence what happens. That's all I'm willing to say right now :)
- hitekker 5y ago
  As a counterpoint, I remember when someone satirized RIIR on HN and the post was flagged into oblivion even though the comments section was mostly approving. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25198571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25198571 Someone reposted the same document with Rust replaced with "$hotlang" which, for a reason you can guess, wasn't flagged at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208313 My impression is that there are more than a few Rust developers who dearly believe in rewriting in Rust and were sincerely, bitterly offended by a joke to the contrary.
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    See, I see that as the opposite: it is easy to get offended by the joke precisely because it is not true. IMHO, the second version is better because, by removing the language at hand, it directs the joke at the idea of re-writing everything in the first place, rather than at some specific niche of people who may or may not even actually exist. I could/would also get into a debate about "satire" and what exactly it is and means, but I have complicated feelings about it, how words change over time, etc.
    - hitekker 5y ago
      I think the seminal text on offense, jokes, and satires in the worship of programming languages is probably https://web.archive.org/web/20061110043911/https://fluff.info/blog/arch/00000127.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20061110043911/https://fluff.inf... I've found it be to pretty useful in determining why I'm much more sensitive to things I care about than the things I don't, and particularly when jokes carry an element of truth that I cannot bear to acknowledge
      - crazy_horse 5y ago
        I'd never seen this, but it's too good. Thanks.
  - geodel 5y ago
    Agree with what you said. Another data point I noted how often popular Rust associated people hit Twitter whining about a disagreement they had on hacker news. I have almost never seen with other popular/mainstream programing languages. But for Rust it is regular thing.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  As a programmer I think it's notable that when I learned Rust I wanted to rewrite stuff in Rust. I rewrote 'leakdice' as part of learning Rust, so arguably that doesn't count (though I had never rewritten a program to learn a previous language), and 'misfortunate' wouldn't make sense in unsafe languages so that doesn't count either, but I then also immediately began rewriting 4store in Rust. I had never been compelled to rewrite stuff in other languages I learned. I am a compulsive programmer, so I did write stuff in languages I learned, (the other day I re-discovered, via an enquiry to a very old email address, that I used to know Scheme, as evidenced by the fact I wrote some Scheme that they were asking about from last century) but I didn't rewrite anything until I learned Rust. C. Go. Python. Java. PHP. Bash. Perl. C#. Early C++. I'm sure there are many more. But always new things, either because the language afforded something I hadn't considered before or more often I wanted something and I chose a languages I knew would be able to achieve it. That's why I wrote some PHP less than a year ago, I'm not proud of that, but PHP got the job done so that's what I did. I can report that modern PHP is merely a bad idea, like Javascript, which I probably forgot to list above. Anyway with Rust I not only wanted to write new low-level code in Rust, I looked again at C programs I use and thought, "I should rewrite that in Rust". It felt like a good idea, and I expect to follow through on it at least somewhat, let's see how long 4store takes.
mamcx 5y ago
I see it more like an aspirational goal. But one where everyone understand that is at most about start new projects that wholesome replace them (or "replace" is for create alternatives, not for truly rewrite the old ones). And I'm one that will be super-happy if all C/C++ code in the world dissapear now and be replace by Pascal/Rust/Zig/D/anything else that is better. MOST of my troubles are because C/C++. And the worst ones. Even if I 'm in a environment (business apps, ERps) where in theory system lang concerns are a distant worry.

steveklabnik 5y ago

It is a weird self-fulfilling thing. People talk about it like it's a thing, so it's a thing, even if there's very little actual evidence of anyone sincerely holding this belief. People repeat that there's this plague of folks requesting that projects be re-written, and while it is literally true that I have seen two or three instances of this (you link to one of them, and notably it is not anyone harassing maintainers about their choices), it's been two or three. I actually got annoyed with this enough that I started doing a quantitative analysis; if you look at the canonical repository tracking this, it's got 44 total issues, most of which are jokes https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues If you search GitHub for issues with these words in it, you get some, but many are either obvious jokes, people making issues on their own projects to think about doing this, and things like that. I never followed through on collecting it into a blog post though. I didn't think your writing was inappropriate at all; memes are memes, and I'm convinced that this one is just never going to die, because it's taken a life of its own, regardless of the underlying truth or not. It is always worth pushing back on this sentiment, even if I don't think Rust specifically tends to actually embody that sentiment very much. (Also: I don't know why you're now being downvoted. Hacker News works in mysterious ways.)

kristoff_it 5y ago
Looking forward to when we get our own unfounded never-dying meme :^)
crazy_horse 5y ago
Why does it matter?
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  I think it matters less and less, which is part of why I didn't follow through on publishing. As to why it used to matter, well, it is tremendously difficult to bring a new programming language into popular usage, and even more in the systems space. It requires tireless effort by a large number of people. It is a very fragile thing. The stories we tell ourselves and others matter, and they influence what happens. That's all I'm willing to say right now :)
hitekker 5y ago
As a counterpoint, I remember when someone satirized RIIR on HN and the post was flagged into oblivion even though the comments section was mostly approving. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25198571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25198571 Someone reposted the same document with Rust replaced with "$hotlang" which, for a reason you can guess, wasn't flagged at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208313 My impression is that there are more than a few Rust developers who dearly believe in rewriting in Rust and were sincerely, bitterly offended by a joke to the contrary.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  See, I see that as the opposite: it is easy to get offended by the joke precisely because it is not true. IMHO, the second version is better because, by removing the language at hand, it directs the joke at the idea of re-writing everything in the first place, rather than at some specific niche of people who may or may not even actually exist. I could/would also get into a debate about "satire" and what exactly it is and means, but I have complicated feelings about it, how words change over time, etc.
  - hitekker 5y ago
    I think the seminal text on offense, jokes, and satires in the worship of programming languages is probably https://web.archive.org/web/20061110043911/https://fluff.info/blog/arch/00000127.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20061110043911/https://fluff.inf... I've found it be to pretty useful in determining why I'm much more sensitive to things I care about than the things I don't, and particularly when jokes carry an element of truth that I cannot bear to acknowledge
    - crazy_horse 5y ago
      I'd never seen this, but it's too good. Thanks.
- geodel 5y ago
  Agree with what you said. Another data point I noted how often popular Rust associated people hit Twitter whining about a disagreement they had on hacker news. I have almost never seen with other popular/mainstream programing languages. But for Rust it is regular thing.
tialaramex 5y ago
As a programmer I think it's notable that when I learned Rust I wanted to rewrite stuff in Rust. I rewrote 'leakdice' as part of learning Rust, so arguably that doesn't count (though I had never rewritten a program to learn a previous language), and 'misfortunate' wouldn't make sense in unsafe languages so that doesn't count either, but I then also immediately began rewriting 4store in Rust. I had never been compelled to rewrite stuff in other languages I learned. I am a compulsive programmer, so I did write stuff in languages I learned, (the other day I re-discovered, via an enquiry to a very old email address, that I used to know Scheme, as evidenced by the fact I wrote some Scheme that they were asking about from last century) but I didn't rewrite anything until I learned Rust. C. Go. Python. Java. PHP. Bash. Perl. C#. Early C++. I'm sure there are many more. But always new things, either because the language afforded something I hadn't considered before or more often I wanted something and I chose a languages I knew would be able to achieve it. That's why I wrote some PHP less than a year ago, I'm not proud of that, but PHP got the job done so that's what I did. I can report that modern PHP is merely a bad idea, like Javascript, which I probably forgot to list above. Anyway with Rust I not only wanted to write new low-level code in Rust, I looked again at C programs I use and thought, "I should rewrite that in Rust". It felt like a good idea, and I expect to follow through on it at least somewhat, let's see how long 4store takes.

mamcx 5y ago

I see it more like an aspirational goal. But one where everyone understand that is at most about start new projects that wholesome replace them (or "replace" is for create alternatives, not for truly rewrite the old ones). And I'm one that will be super-happy if all C/C++ code in the world dissapear now and be replace by Pascal/Rust/Zig/D/anything else that is better. MOST of my troubles are because C/C++. And the worst ones. Even if I 'm in a environment (business apps, ERps) where in theory system lang concerns are a distant worry.